It's interesting to watch Krudd so shamelessly rewrite history whenever it suits his polemical purposes.

He's now trying to suggest that Labor came into office in the midst of an economic crisis, and that the Coalition was responsible.

Not true.

Labor came into office inheriting from John Howard and Peter Costello a booming economy and a budget that was in surplus.

Yes, the global financial crisis that came later was not Labor's fault. But one of the reasons we are getting through it better than most other countries is because Howard's government ran the economy so well, and reformed the banking sector such that we have some of the strongest and most secure banks in the world.

The misanthropic attitude of conservationists was revealed on Tuesday night when a group of Aboriginal protestors from Cape York gate-crashed a Wilderness Society and green fundraiser.

Dressed in chains and in two giant koala suits, the Cape York Aborigines crashed the party to protest against Queensland’s Wild Rivers legislation, which bans development within two kilometres of the Lockhart, Stewart and Archer rivers.

The protestors blame the Wilderness Society for instigating the legislation, which they argue denies them the ability to build businesses and enterprises on their traditional land – so that more of their people can move out of welfare into the real economy. Tania Major, the spokesperson for the Cape York Aborigines, said they weren’t against conservation but they were protesting because the Wilderness Society had not consulted with them or given them a choice on how to manage their land.

These arguments left the Wilderness Society members unmoved, with spokesperson Anna Christie saying on ABC Radio that environmental sustainability should come before people.

Only those comfortably off are able to so quickly disregard the importance of economic development. They forget that the only reason they can afford to shop at Macro and buy organic food is because they live in an industrialised society. Try living in the outback and getting an organic soy latte.

The fact that the greenies and the Aborigines have fallen out over this issue is a first. Historically, the green movement has tended to support Aboriginal causes. Protesting against the Intervention and the Howard government was a trendy pastime for many greenies.

However, the green movement has failed to address the causes of Aboriginal disadvantage, tending to rely on detached commentary rather than tackling real issues.

The green way of looking at sustainable development is typical of the affluent world that sees sustainability as being environmentally friendly—recycling, living in eco houses, and driving fuel-efficient cars. But for the poor and disadvantaged, sustainability is about having essential services such as housing, water, sewerage, and transport.

It is deeply hypocritical for the green movement to deny Aboriginal development on the premise that this will preserve the environment when they owe their own comfortable existence to Australia’s developed economy.

The official Met office predicted a "BBQ summer" but July in Britain has in fact been wet and miserable -- which doesn't say much for the usefulness of the models they rely on, particularly since they have got it wrong 3 years in a row. Private forecaster and climate skeptic Piers Corbyn works from different assumptions, enabling much more accurate prediction

In response to the question 'Does the technology exist?' to do the 'seasonal forecasting' the Met office find so hard. Piers said: "It is not a matter of technology but of the application of Physics and equations. Just as computer models of the economy fail so does the Met office approach to long range forecasting. We can predict in detail months ahead how solar particle and magnetic effects modulated by the moon cause the Jet stream - the tracks of lows - to shift. That is the key to weather type change prediction in Britain & Ireland."

He read out his WeatherAction summer forecast headline (see below) issued on 22 February which well describes the summer so far - and said it also gave more detail in 13 weather periods through the summer which were developed into 27 weather periods in the monthly forecasts. This contrasted dramatically with the Met Office 'barbecue summer' forecast issued in April - which made no attempt to identify sub-periods - and their recent meandering admissions of failure.

Piers said key points about his Solar Weather Technique (SWT) of long range forecasting are available on the web and more would come but some investors were countenancing against that. Philip Avery of BBC/Met Office then commented "Yes, because they make money". In response to this admission by the Met Office that there is merit in WeatherAction forecasts Piers said: "Yes, more will be published but you and governments will not welcome it because it will pull the rug from under your belief in man-made global warming. The world is now cooling and we can explain why."

Afterwards Piers said:

"Our summer forecast under SWT25d has gone excellently. We are especially pleased with the DETAIL in July (see below). Our month ahead forecast graph issued at end of June specifically predicted that Tuesday 28th July would be the best day in the S/E for a while, which it was.

We said the period 29th-31st would be a 'TOP Extra Activity' Red Weather Warning period with High Whirlwind/tornado risk and that during this period a month's worth of rain was likely in a few hours in places. "These extremes have been realised. Some western parts were hit by 60mm of rain on 29th and whirlwind / tornado events hit Scotland and Western parts with floods in places.

We issue weather warnings over forty days ahead while the Met Office often finds it hard to make them four hours ahead. "It's a pity that Climate campers don't feel able to use our forecasts and are getting drenched once again because their dogmatic belief in the unbelievable provided by their mates in the Met Office means they cannot make weather-wise plans. I hope soon that real climate Karma will run over their Dogma!"

Thursday, July 30, 2009

This is clearly the product of another one of his thought bubbles. No real plan, just an announcement made as soon as the idea popped into his head.

Great politics of course.

Large sections of the public will be suckered by this talk about lovely and huggy green jobs that don't exist yet and which probably never will.

How many years now have sundry greenies and other carpetbaggers been promising us a green future full of green collar jobs, even as the promised jobs just never seemed to quite happen?

So the proposition is that to make a small cut in Australia's small greenhouse gas footprint, (and yes, less than 1.5% of total global emissions is small Virginia), we are going to destroy tens of thousands of real jobs held by real people right now for vague promises about green jobs in the future doing, well, doing something or other. Nobody's really all that sure what.

Never mind that every one of any of these jobs that actually does come into existence will do so only because the government has diverted your tax dollars away from education and health and the like, because none of them can happen in the real world without massive government subsidies.

Never mind that a recent Spanish study showed that the creation of every one so-called green job resulted in the loss of over two real jobs elsewhere in the economy, and at a cost of over $1 million per green job.

Employment Minister Mark Arbib stumbled yesterday over Kevin Rudd's central ALP national conference promise to create 50,000 new green jobs by saying they were just work experience and admitting he didn't know the details of the payments for unemployed youth.

Julia Gillard says today that Arbib made a mistake yesterday. Yes, he made the political mistake of telling the truth.

Andrew Bolt breaks down this number of 50,000 while trying to find any real new jobs in it:

First, he’ll train 4000 jobless to install his free pink batts, a skill you can pick up in days for jobs that can last only as long as Rudd’s cash. No real jobs there.

Second, he’ll pay to teach 30,000 trainees and apprentices “green skills”—which actually means, say, just having a plumbing apprentice learn how to hook up a solar water heater.

No real jobs there, either.

Another 10,000 jobless people will get 26 weeks of training in “job ready green skills”, presumably so they can plant trees and the like should a government pay them. Again, no real jobs.

That leaves only the 6000 “new jobs” that Rudd says will contribute to “environmental sustainability in priority local economies”.

Eh? Translated, that’s 6000 young jobless set to work planting trees, making walkways on wetlands, and other taxpayer-funded trivia.

Jobs, yes, but real ones?

So, there's the green future for your kids. Planting trees and clearing walk ways in a glorified work for the dole scheme.

Ian Plimer has outraged the ayatollahs of purist environmentalism, the Torquemadas of the doctrine of global warming, and he seems to relish the damnation they heap on him. Plimer is a geologist, professor of mining geology at Adelaide University, and he may well be Australia's best-known and most notorious academic. Plimer, you see, is an unremitting critic of "anthropogenic global warming" -- man-made climate change to you and me -- and the current environmental orthodoxy that if we change our polluting ways, global warming can be reversed.

It is, of course, not new to have a highly qualified scientist saying that global warming is an entirely natural phenomenon with many precedents in history. Many have made the argument, too, that it is rubbish to contend human behaviour is causing the current climate change. And it has often been well argued that it is totally ridiculous to suppose that changes in human behaviour -- cleaning up our act through expensive slight-of-hand taxation tricks -- can reverse the trend.

But most of these scientific and academic voices have fallen silent in the face of environmental Jacobinism. Purging humankind of its supposed sins of environmental degradation has become a religion with a fanatical and often intolerant priesthood, especially among the First World urban elites.

via Greenie Watch, which apparently had been flagged with Google/Blogger by climate hysterics for its "objectionable" content. Prevented Dr Ray from updating for less than 24 hours before the "interdict" was lifted.

The results of the new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll are a major warning sign for Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress. On some key issues, the gains that Democrats had made on Republicans in the last couple of years have disappeared, and the GOP has begun to reassert itself. In other policy areas, traditional Democratic leads are diminishing.

Saw my first episode tonight, and it was pretty much as I expected, that is, fantastically expensive homes of very well-off people with a lot of greendressing thrown in.

I'm going to focus of the house in San Francisco.

First thing I'd say about it is - it was wonderful!

I'd seriously consider killing someone for that place.

Now I realise that it is the wealthy who often blaze the trail when it comes to innovative new ways of doing things, and that for many of these the real costs come down over time if they are more generally adopted.

So some of what the series showcases may very well prove to have long term and wider applicability to housing and help to make houses that are more energy and resource efficient.

But dear oh dear, the program has middle-class posturing and moral smugness to burn.

I'd be very interested in the results of real cost accounting for many of these places and to see just how money saving they really are.

As an example of the often naive assumptions and refusal to properly account for real through life costs, there is the wind turbine attached to this particular home.

The first we lay eyes on it reveals the conundrum of these things. It was still.

So no wind means it is producing no power.

This means it is not producing savings in electricity consumption to help pay for its cost.

And what a cost! Between $20,000 and $30,000 just for one domestic grade windmill. (How much did the entire house cost? Most of the homes I saw tonight would easily have cost much more than an average family home.)

The rather annoying host of the program happily informs us that it will eventually pay for itself.

However, the operative word here is eventually.

I seriously doubt this figure would be recouped by the time the owner had grown old and died.

This of course points to the general problem with wind power. It is not as the compare said "free energy" at all. Compared the conventionally generated electricity, the power produced by wind turbines is actually very expensive. Once you factor in all the actual costs.

That's because they are very expensive to make, install and maintain and all for intermittent electricity generation totally dependent on the wind blowing.

Oh, and dependent on the wind not blowing too hard, when turbines have to be turned off so they don't suffer any damage and don't produce too much electricity that may overload the system.

(On a large scale, this is why Great Britain has spent over 2 billion pounds on wind farms that produce little more than 1% of the country's net energy needs.)

I also suspect that the turbine would have to be replaced or have a major overhall long before it started to produce any net savings to the home owner, and thus set her back to pretty much where she was originally.

But such is green economics within what is still essentially a religious movement for wealthy dilettantes.

Are the Aussies losing their winning mentality? First they stop the sledging. Then they start losing cricket matches. Then they start whinging. When we think of sporting winners, we invariably think of our friends Down Under. But now, God forbid, are the Aussies becoming more like the English?

THE Rudd government's $1.3billion green car innovation fund will not deliver a more environmentally friendly automotive industry and is little more than shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic, industry veterans say.

Calling for funding to be tied to major reform of the industry, as in the US, former car company executives say money dished out by the government under the green car fund is industry assistance under a new name.

Their criticism comes after Industry Minister Kim Carr announced the federal government would provide $42 million from the green car fund to help Ford develop a new four-cylinder engine for the Falcon and Territory.

The funding came as Ford said it would dump plans to build the four-cylinder Ford Focus at its Broadmeadows plant in Melbourne.

Former Mitsubishi Australia managing director Graham Spurling said the green car fund, intended to help companies develop low-emission, fuel-efficient cars, was simply an industry handout with a new banner.

"It's the same old ship with the same old deck chairs," Mr Spurling said. "The industry has undergone huge changes overseas and I think Australia needs to understand that there is a need for a substantial paradigm shift. The current automotive regime is becoming outdated."

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Karon Snowdon, reporting for the ABC’s Rear Vision, presents a potted history of China:

Influenced by the Soviet model, collectivisation and social reforms followed. While Mao’s Great Leap Forward was meant to catapult China into the big league of heavy industry, it had mixed results.

“Mixed results”? Is that the ABC’s shorthand for the brutal imposition of the mad whims of a Communist psychopath which lead to the deaths of millions? Jasper Becker’s book on this obscentity puts it rather better:

In 1984 American demographers uncovered evidence that at least 30 million people had starved to death in China between 1958 and 1962.... Based on hundreds of interviews and unpublished documents, (Becker’s book) describes how Mao Zedong created a man-made famine throughout China. Mao’s Great Leap Forward was the greatest example of Utopian engineering ever attempted. Instead, even in the richest regions, peasants died in their millions while the rest became gaunt skeletons. Through graphic eyewitness accounts, the author describes a catalogue of terror, cannibalism, slavery, torture and imprisonment that took place on a massive scale during the great famine in which 10 million people were arrested and sent to death camps while a further 10 million fled their homes. He goes on to explain how the darkest secret of Mao’s rule was kept hidden and why evidence of what happened was disbelieved for so long.

More people died in this catastrophe than in the Second World War or in the concentration camps of Hitler or Stalin.

A catastrophe so large that the Communist Party sidelined Mao and reduced him to a figurehead, which is why he then unleashed the Cultural Revolution as a means of circumventing the party and reestablishing his control and power.

A militant Islamic group called the “Nigerian Taliban” has killed dozens of people with coordinated attacks in the northern part of Nigeria, with the goal of overthrowing the government, imposing strict sharia law, and abolishing “Western-style education.”

Especially that whole “rain” concept. They don’t accept that rain is evaporated water.

In an interview with the BBC, the group’s leader, Mohammed Yusuf, said such education “spoils the belief in one God”.

“There are prominent Islamic preachers who have seen and understood that the present Western-style education is mixed with issues that run contrary to our beliefs in Islam,” he said.

“Like rain. We believe it is a creation of God rather than an evaporation caused by the sun that condenses and becomes rain.’

Oooohkay.

But the creationists at the Discovery Institute do have some common ground with the Nigerian Taliban:

“Like saying the world is a sphere. If it runs contrary to the teachings of Allah, we reject it. We also reject the theory of Darwinism.”

An invisible line divides Europe in two. North of it, people tend to be allergic to the uncooked flesh of apples. South of it, it is the skin of apples that they react to. This is just one of many discoveries that are changing how we think about food allergies, and how we protect people from them...MORE

It is the conflict in Rudd’s messages between policy and politics that generates constant doubts about his real priorities.

In his second essay, Rudd rightly focuses on the need to withdraw the stimulus over time, retire debt and look to productivity.... (T)he return-to-surplus pledge dictates what Rudd calls “unpopular decisions” as federal spending is kept to 2 per cent in real terms for many years.

Last week Access Economics described the task in these terms: “The 2 per cent rule doesn’t sound scary and hasn’t lost any votes so far, yet it implies a tight straitjacket on federal spending in coming years. You may be surprised to know that, after 4 1/2 years, the cumulative impact of the 2 per cent real rule will be devastating. It would, for example, be the equivalent cost savings from abolishing the Defence Department, or it would be the equivalent of the savings the government would make from lifting the age pension not to 67 but to 107.” ...

Great.

At the link above you can also see Fairfax's Ross Gittins start to fall out of love.

The girl, 14, was peppered with questions about whether she had ever had sex before she broke down on the 2Day FM radio station hosted by by Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O, revealing the rape ordeal she endured at the age of 12…

Under pressure from her mother to reveal if she had ever had sex, the girl broke down and revealed she had been raped.

Sandilands’ first response to the horrifying revelation was, “Right, is that the only experience you have had?” The segment briefly continued with the girl’s mother admitting she knew of the rape before Jackie O intervened and shut the segment down.

Vile, vile, vile. If the police aren’t speaking to the mother already, what’s keeping them? As for Sandilands and his sidekick, sack them, ban them, whatever. The station is aying the stunt went wrong, but in what possible way could it have gone right?

And for God’s sake let the authorities get the help to the girl that she so badly needs.

UPDATE

Listen to the audio (first link) to hear just how gross - how utterly barbaric - the segment was even before it went “wrong”. First, the girl’s mother, sounding excited, says she has brought in her daughter for the lie detector test to check if she’s telling the truth about “drugs and sex”. She “might have had sex before”, mum tells the world, and she’s “smoked marijuana”. Already the segment has gone way, way over the line.

But the girl is hooked up to the detector, monitored by a man called Charles. Then this:

Jackie O: All right, we have her hooked up to the lie detector.

Sandilands: Awwww.

Jackie O: She’s not happy! I just saw her listening to that replay.

Sandilands: How are you, Rachel?

Girl: I’m scared. It’s not fair.

Jackie O: It wouldn’t be fair on any kid, I tell you, I sympathise with you

Sandilands: Is that true, Charles, is that true?

Charles: That is true.

Sandilands: She is scared, everyone, yeah.

Jackie O: Yeah. Mum, you have a series of questions you’re going to ask your daughter, and, Rachael, you reply either yes or no and then it will be picked up on the lie detector whether you are telling the truth or lying.

Girl: I’ve already told you the story of this… Don’t look at me and smile because it’s not funny. (Shouts:) Oh, OK … I got raped when I was 12 years old.

(Silence)

Sandilands: Right. (Pause.) And is that the, er, is that the only experience you’ve had?

Mother: I only found out about that a couple of months ago. Yes, I knew about that.

Girl: And yet you still ask me the question.

Mother: I was, the question was, have you had sex, other than that.

Jackie O: Rachel, I’m really sorry, we didn’t actually know that that was the case, and I think we might actually abort this segment.... I’m really sorry. We’ll just let you off the hook.... You just take a breather… Have you had any counselling over this issue?

And so Greenpeace sent a ship off to the Arctic to protest against the melting ice and the fossil fuels that are to blame. From the ship’s log:

The sea ice is chasing us into the bay of large icebergs.... For the first time in this trip we do some real icebreaking… At first, it is pretty easy going. With 90% power on, we are just able to break through the 50cm ice. Then we have to stop, back up one ship length, and charge at it again. And again. And again.... Icebreaking is time consuming and sucks down tons of fuel.

Russian military analysts say that the principal reason for India's decision to develop defense cooperation with the USA lies in Russia's numerous violations in execution of contract terms with India. India was outraged when Russia delayed the modernization of the Admiral Gorshkov aircraft carrier, as Russia did previously with the delivery of warships and submarines.

A new scandal arose several days before Clinton's visit to Delhi. It proved that Russia had sold India defective air-to-air rockets. Up to 50 percent of the rockets were reportedly defective.

Interesting that the article says that the next to go maybe the biggest, that is, China. Was reported in today's paper that there was now some doubt about the sale of Russian Su-33 carrier-borne fighters to China, (though it may be the Russians who have gone cold on this deal).

What was the result in the event? UKIP won 11.8 per cent of the vote - comfortably ahead of the Greens and remarkably close to the LibDems (or “worryingly close” as I just heard a Radio 5 Live presenter put it).

Did our state broadcaster apologise for its mistake? No, alright, that would have been expecting too much; but was it, at least, a little abashed in its tone? Nope. It simply edited UKIP out of its coverage. On the one o’clock news, a little bar chart came up to represent the results: blue for the Conservatives, red for Labour, yellow for the LibDems and, er, green for the fifth-placed Greens. The party that had come fourth, and been just 800 votes behind the LibDems, wasn’t represented. Nor was UKIP mentioned on the contemporaneous radio news.

Dear Norwegian Nobel Committee, We the undersigned, would like to nominate legendary performing artist and global humanitarian Michael Jackson for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. He was and will continue to be one of the most famous, and influential men on earth.....

Hey, don't laugh, they gave one to Al Gore for making a science fiction film made to look like a documentary!

Apparently this work of fiction, (as it was substantially revealed to be in a British court when it was found that it wasn't suitable for showing in schools without a warning that it contained serious factual errors), singlehandedly ended a whole series of wars that hadn't even happened yet, fought over things that may or may not happen caused by something that may or may not happen, sometime in the future. Maybe.

So, if that's all it takes to win a Nobel Peace Prize, Michael Jackson has as equally strong a case.

And really, in these enlightened times we live in, the fact that he was a pederast is neither here nor there is it?

This goes to the heart of my concerns about grand government schemes, whether to rapidly stimulate the economy or take over the hospital system.

Or indeed in designing what could be the greatest boondoggle in human history, the emissions trading scheme (which financial institutions and insurance companies are just rubbing their hands in anticipatory glee over, with Lehman Brothers busily positioning itself to make an expecting killing on such schemes before it went down the gurgler, as was Enron.)

One question I always ask people is "when was the last time you saw the government do something efficiently and well, on time and on budget, and which achieved its aims without unforeseen and unfortunate unintended consequences?"

Not only are the houses not yet built, each costs the price of the grandest mansion:

NORTHERN Territory Aboriginal Affairs Minister Alison Anerson has threatened to quit the Labor party in protest over the Rudd government’s “appalling” handling of a $700million remote housing package that she labelled a “big farce”.

FILE THIS UNDER “THINGS I’D LIKE TO BE TRUE:” Hydrocarbons in the deep Earth? “The oil and gas that fuels our homes and cars started out as living organisms that died, were compressed, and heated under heavy layers of sediments in the Earth’s crust. Scientists have debated for years whether some of these hydrocarbons could also have been created deeper in the Earth and formed without organic matter. Now for the first time, scientists have found that ethane and heavier hydrocarbons can be synthesized under the pressure-temperature conditions of the upper mantle —the layer of Earth under the crust and on top of the core. The research was conducted by scientists at the Carnegie Institution’s Geophysical Laboratory, with colleagues from Russia and Sweden, and is published in the July 26, advanced on-line issue of Nature Geoscience.” Abiotic hydrocarbons is an old theory; it would be nice if it were true.

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Another example of how Labor gets given a free pass by the media, academics and special interest groups for saying things that they condemned a conservative for saying previously.

Andrew Bolt lists some reactions from this cast of usual suspects when Tony Abbott said eight years ago exactly what Labor is saying now:

(Finance Minister Lindsay) Tanner said people could not be too choosy when it came to finding work in times of high unemployment. He was commenting after his federal front bench colleague Employment Participation Minister Mark Arbib warned job seekers not to be job snobs.

But now The Sydney Morning Herald opines: "His message today might be unpalatable but that does not mean he is wrong. This is a time for a strong work ethic and cheerfulness in the face of adversity."

After about 10 minutes as foreign minister I was a little surprised to learn I was "responsible" for miscreant Australians who got into trouble in foreign countries.

No, no, no, don't get it wrong - drug traffickers, drunks, kleptomaniacs and fraudsters weren't responsible for their own stupidity - I was.

It's about time that great nanny in Canberra, the Federal Government, turned around and told people they are responsible for their own decisions.

Downer has some amusing anecdotes about people's unreasonable and ungrateful reactions to being caught in foreign places at the wrong time, often despite the government warning them to either not go or to get out if they were already there.

Such as the people evacuated from Lebanon during Israel's action against the terrorist group Hezbollah wanted to know if they'd get frequent flyer pointsfrom the free flights! And of course the reason it took some time to get it all arranged wasn't because they were on the other side of the world, but because of racism.

In the mid-nineties, which climatologist and which model predicted the cooling trend of the turn of the century and the oughts? And, if they didn’t, on what basis do you trust their claims for 2050 or 2100?

Today's Rasmussen survey is the first one in which all polling was done after President Obama's prime-time press conference on health care. That press conference, and Obama's blundering into the Gates arrest controversy, have driven the President's "approval index"--the difference between those who strongly approve of his performance and those who strongly disapprove--to an all-time low of -11:

THE BBC has been plunged into a new controversy after Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson used the most offensive swear word in the English language to describe British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in front of a studio audience.

Clarkson described Mr Brown as "a c--t" during the show's recording on Wednesday night.

Although some in the audience reportedly burst out laughing at his comments, BBC2 controller Janice Hadlow later gave Clarkson a "dressing down" in front of crew, the Daily Mail reports.

He is also understood to have made similarly offensive remarks about Mr Brown to an audience during the show's filming earlier this month.

Thomas Friedman demands support for global warming laws to make houses more green:

Yes, this bill’s goal of reducing U.S. carbon emissions to 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 is nowhere near what science tells us we need to mitigate climate change. But it also contains significant provisions to prevent new buildings from becoming energy hogs...

Then Friedman, feeling noble after demanding sacrifices from others, drives home to this energy hog:

We write in response to your issue discussing "the coming climate crunch", including the Editorial 'Time to act' (Nature 458, 10771078; 2009). We feel it is alarmist.

We are among more than 50 current and former members of the American Physical Society (APS) who have signed an open letter to the APS Council this month, calling for a reconsideration of its November 2007 policy statement on climate change (see open letter at http://tinyurl.com/lg266u; APS statement at http://tinyurl.com/56zqxr). The letter proposes an alternative statement, which the signatories believe to be a more accurate representation of the current scientific evidence. It requests that an objective scientific process be established, devoid of political or financial agendas, to help prevent subversion of the scientific process and the intolerance towards scientific disagreement that pervades the climate issue.

On 1 May 2009, the APS Council decided to review its current statement via a high-level subcommittee of respected senior scientists. We applaud this decision. It is the first such reappraisal by a major scientific professional society that we are aware of, and we hope it will lead to meaningful change that reflects a more balanced view of climate-change issues.

At a recent dinner at the University of Oxford, a senior researcher in atmospheric physics was telling me about his coming holiday in Thailand. I asked him whether he was concerned that his trip would make a contribution to climate change - we had, after all, just sat through a two-hour presentation on the topic. "Of course," he said blithely. "And I'm sure the government will make long-haul flights illegal at some point."

I had deliberately steered our conversation this way as part of an informal research project that I am conducting - one you are welcome to join. My participants so far include a senior adviser to a leading UK climate policy expert who flies regularly to South Africa ("my offsets help set a price in the carbon market"), a member of the British Antarctic Survey who makes several long-haul skiing trips a year ("my job is stressful"), a national media environment correspondent who took his family to Sri Lanka ("I can't see much hope") and a Greenpeace climate campaigner just back from scuba diving in the Pacific ("it was a great trip!").

This is the first part of a three-part article on Mehdi Hasan, senior editor (politics) of the New Statesman, by Harry’s Place guest writer Channel 4 Insider.

Since its foundation in 1913, the New Statesman’s journalism been marked by its rationalism, a consistent concern for the underdog and a healthy scepticism for all forms of authority – not least towards organised religion. This is not surprising. Many of the magazine’s founders were among the most prominent atheists and socialists of their era. At the same time, however, despite their strong ideas and beliefs, these men and women wrote with humour and with great respect for those whose ideas differed from their own.

For example, George Bernard Shaw, one of the New Statesman’s co-founders, frequently attacked religion and yet wrote of his desire to believe in God...

“Academics, like teenagers, sometimes don’t have any sense regarding the degree to which they are conformists.”

So says Thomas Bouchard, the Minnesota psychologist known for his study of twins raised apart, in a retirement interview with Constance Holden in the journal Science.

Journalists, of course, are conformists too. So are most other professions. There’s a powerful human urge to belong inside the group, to think like the majority, to lick the boss’s shoes, and to win the group’s approval by trashing dissenters.

The strength of this urge to conform can silence even those who have good reason to think the majority is wrong.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Another installment of 'times when my fellow poofs give me the sh*ts.'

But we know the answer to Bolt's question below as to why the exhibition only had a Bible available for defacing, and not a copy of the Koran as well, despite the exhibitions stated aim of addressing the exclusion of gays and lesbians from Christianity AND Islam.

Our two terribly brave and transgressive aesthetes know that all they'll get from using a Bible is a whole lot of free publicity, while using the Koran will get them their throats cut.

Andrew Bolt

Friday, July 24, 2009 at 11:46am

It’s curious that the sacred text of only one of the two faiths behind the exhibition was available for defacing:

A publicly funded exhibition is encouraging people to deface the Bible in the name of art — and visitors have responded with abuse and obscenity. The show includes a video of a woman ripping pages from the Bible and stuffing them into her bra, knickers and mouth.

The open Bible is a central part of Made in God’s Image, an exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art (Goma) in Glasgow. By the book is a container of pens and a notice saying: “If you feel you have been excluded from the Bible, please write your way back into it.” ... The exhibition has been created by the artists Anthony Schrag and David Malone, in association with organisations representing gay Christians and Muslims.

More news from the weather is not climate department. A historic winter storm event in South America is underway (July 22nd, 2009) meanwhile in the northern hemisphere, fresh snow in the Alps in July [ie, in summer]. – Anthony

The claim that we face an epidemic of obesity is based on the changing distribution of body mass index (BMI) in society. BMI is a fairly crude way of assessing fatness first proposed by a Belgian mathematician, Adolphe Quetelet, in 1832. It is defined as a person’s weight in kilograms divided by their height in metres, squared (kg/m2). As a recent piece in Slate magazine notes, BMI only gained popularity after the well-known American researcher, Ancel Keys, proposed it as the best way of quickly assessing fatness in an article in 1972.

The other major development was the establishment of cut-off points for weight and health, based on BMI, by the US National Institutes for Health (NIH) in 1985. Now BMI had the force of official backing. As a means of giving health authorities a rough idea of how our bodies are changing, BMI is crude but has the merit of simplicity. However, when applied to individuals, it has the potential to be downright distorting. Firstly, it makes no distinction between fat and muscle mass. Secondly, it is blind to where fat is stored on the body, which some researchers and doctors believe may be crucial to whether it is a health problem or not. Thirdly, it gives a pseudo-scientific precision to the notion that carrying a bit of extra weight is going to kill you.

BMI is actually a poor indicator of future health prospects. There is little difference in mortality rates between people who are of ‘normal’ weight (BMIs of 20-25), ‘overweight’ (BMIs greater than 25 but under 30) and ‘obese’ (greater than 30 but less than 40). Only those who are ‘morbidly obese’ (BMI over 40) and those who are underweight (BMI below 18) have markedly worse health outcomes than those in the middle. Yet on this shaky foundation, a whole industry of weight-watching, health-obsessing, parent-berating government intervention has been built.

Opponents of the bill worried that deep, rapid cuts in emissions would hurt the state's economy. But never fear: In 2008, the California Air Resources Board issued a study reassuring Californians that they can make money hand over fist selling each other wind turbines and electric cars. Implementation of the cap "creates more jobs and saves individual households more money than if California stood by and pursued an unacceptable course of doing nothing at all to address our unbridled reliance on fossil fuels," the study cheerfully declared. Because by 2020 the mandates will increase economic production by $27 billion, boost personal incomes by $14 billion, raise per capita incomes by $200, and produce an additional 100,000 jobs. According to the study, "the bulk of the economic benefits are the result of investments in energy efficiency that more than pay for themselves over time."

The study projects that Californians will offset higher electricity and gasoline bills by driving more fuel efficient cars, by adjusting their thermostats to 68 degrees in winter and 78 degrees in summer, and by using energy efficient appliances at home. The idea is that while electricity will cost more, Californians will do things like switching from incandescent bulbs to energy thrifty compact fluorescent bulbs to reduce their energy usage.

But are these projections accurate? The study's economic peer reviewers don't think so.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

And this doesn't count the billions of dollars in income that the marketers of fear like Greenpeace and the WWF have made in trading on climate change concerns.

The WWF internationally took only five years up to around 2005 to make over $2 billion US. Greenpeace took twice as long to make a similar amount of money.

Extraordinary amounts of money in anybody's language.

As I understand though, the WWF no longer publishes its accounts online. Wonder why?

And yet it is the chicken feed handed out by Exxon-Mobil that everybody talks about.

Ask yourself this though, who has all of the high-profile and very well paid spokespeople? It isn't the sceptics is it?

Here in Australia the only people who's full time job it is to speak and lobby about climate change, whether for Greenpeace or the WWF or the Climate Institute etc, are all on the alarmist side.

Whereas the sceptics are either that unusual beast, a conservative journalist like Andrew Bolt or people, very often retired, blogging in their spare time.

There are powerful transnational interests seeking to influence the debate on climate change, (or more accurately, seeking to prevent any debate), which are very well funded. They are Greenpeace, the WWF and similar organisations.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Though, if Eddie McGuire is a proponent of the idea that Australians are unusually racist, what could be wrong with the idea?

Interesting that both of the examples he gives involve a white guy getting bashed up by...well read on.

And yet the entire narrative of these and other recent assaults and murders has been cast as a simplistic "evil white Australians doing beastly things to oppressed but saintly non-Anglos" morality play by those keen to prove their own moral superiority over ordinary people.

Interesting though that one of the people charged with the bashing of Indian student Sourabh Sharma is himself of Indian descent.

But, as a member of a minority that has had its own share of trouble from parts of the wider society myself, I still reckon Australian society is overwhelmingly characterised by its openness and tolerance.

I live in an area with high numbers of recently arrived and still establishing immigrants, especially from the Middle East and Africa. Arab and African Muslim women veiled in half a dozen different ways rub shoulders with Christians from the Sudan.

There's an African church that meets every Sunday in the community centre, and I heard the choir practising outside one morning. Singing in English, but with that unmistakable African sound. And what a wonderful sound it was too.

The men's hairdressing shop was bought by some Iraqi Shi'ites several years ago and they have turned it into a thriving business. Everybody, including Africans and Anglos, goes there.

It's not perfect where I live. What or where is? But most people seem to get along quite nicely and I think that is what is normal in this country, despite what those who make a living from trying to sell fear, (at either end of the spectrum), say.

FEMALE CALLER (31:50): He (Michael Jackson) is truly the soundtrack of my life. I also have a theory about Sarah Palin as well and I’m going to put it out there on radio, hopefully someone can investigate.

But, I think maybe she did something to Michael Jackson. Maybe there’s a scandal there. Maybe she’s stepping down because something’s about to come out. I don’t know, but I’m gonna just put it out there on your show so we’ll see.

But as we've seen with Mrs Palin, "maybe" has always been enough for her demented critics.

This isn't to say that she is beyond criticism or has what it takes for an office like the United States presidency (which I suspect she doesn't).

However, the nature of the criticism heaped upon her has been so insane and unhinged, shot through with the kind of personal vindictiveness and nastiness that only "progressives" seem to be able to summon, that it is difficult for any fair person not to leap to her defence.

And it gives you a real measure of these people that several of them, including Crikey's creepy Guy Rundle, have thought nothing of attacking her children as a way of getting at her.

When in charge of markets, governments tend to deliver what they think the public should buy rather than what the public wants to buy. Which is how things are shaping up for GM, now under majority government ownership. Last month the carmaker planned to shut its Orion plant:

But a few weeks later, the company reversed course. GM now says it will retool Orion to make compact, gas-sipping cars. The change of heart says a lot about how GM’s new owners – the federal government owns 60% of the company and the United Auto Workers (UAW) owns 17% – are making considerations other than profitability a top priority for the auto maker.

Because if profitability were a priority, the Orion plant might be re-tooled to build something even larger than the mid-size sedans it’s currently producing:

As Ford looks to reinvent itself with smaller, energy efficient vehicles they are faced with the stark reality that as of late May their Ford F-150 series continues to outsell the Toyota Camry.

Let that sink in for a moment. The best-selling truck in the U.S. still outsells the best-selling car …

There is a widely-held view outside the US (and within it) that the US auto industry is in crisis due to producing the wrong vehicles – behemoths, when everyone wants capsules. This isn’t so, as even Barack Obama knows. The main problem lies elsewhere, as Mark Steyn has pointed out:

GM has 96,000 employees but provides health benefits to a million people.

How do you make that math add up? Not by selling cars: Honda and Nissan make a pre-tax operating profit per vehicle of around 1600 bucks; Ford, Chrysler and GM make a loss of between $500 and $1,500. That’s to say, they lose money on every vehicle they sell.

Solution: keep making the popular trucks, but cut the gigantic corporate socialism. Oh, and appoint Iowahawk as US car czar:

Obama – a Hemi man himself, when allowed his choice – is headed in the opposite direction: too small to fail.

Engaged to Be ‘Married’The Jerusalem Post has an interview with a member of the Basij, the teen militia that enforces the Iranian regime’s will. Even with what we knew about the Basij’s brutality, this is shocking:

>He said he had been a highly regarded member of the force, and had so “impressed my superiors” that, at 18, “I was given the ‘honor’ to temporarily marry young girls before they were sentenced to death.”

>In the Islamic Republic it is illegal to execute a young woman, regardless of her crime, if she is a virgin, he explained. Therefore a “wedding” ceremony is conducted the night before the execution: The young girl is forced to have sexual intercourse with a prison guard--essentially raped by her “husband.”

>“I regret that, even though the marriages were legal,” he said.

>Why the regret, if the marriages were “legal?”

>”Because,” he went on, “I could tell that the girls were more afraid of their ‘wedding’ night than of the execution that awaited them in the morning. And they would always fight back, so we would have to put sleeping pills in their food. By morning the girls would have an empty expression; it seemed like they were ready or wanted to die.

>”I remember hearing them cry and scream after [the rape] was over,” he said. “I will never forget how this one girl clawed at her own face and neck with her finger nails afterwards. She had deep scratches all over her.”

So I think where we’re going is to begin to see a Gaian earth in its ecological, cybernetic way, infused with some notion of mind or soul or chi, which will transform our attitudes to it away from an instrumentalist one, towards an attitude of greater reverence. I mean, the truth is, unless we do that, I mean we seriously are in trouble, because we know that Gaia is revolting against the impact of human beings on it.

Hamilton has found not science but a neo-animist faith - and one that’s hostile to humans, as well as to reason. Note how the ABC presenter laps it up.

Said it before, I'll say it again. Climate alarmism has more to do with religion than science, and this proves it.

People like Hamilton resemble fundamentalist Christians concerning evolution. Science for them is something to be used to validate what they already "know" to be true, not a tool to test the validity of what they believe.

More than 50 food products and supplements have been exposed by a Europe-wide investigation for making unproven claims about their health benefits.

Ocean Spray cranberry juice, Lipton black tea and some probiotic supplements are among the items whose claimed health benefits are scientifically unproven, according to an investigation by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).

Fish oil supplements which purport to improve brain growth in babies and children have come under particular scrutiny, with the agency rejecting most of the benefits claimed by manufacturers.

The initial results of the inquiry suggest that consumers could be wasting millions of pounds each year on products they think will improve their diet and lifestyle.

As anyone prepared to look at the evidence has already known for some time, the claims made about this or that food or supplement have all too often rested on dodgy poor quality studies of dubious scientific validity.

To give an egregious example, several years ago there appeared reports in newspapers etc about how a study had proven the benefits of fish oil.

These reports were the result of media outlets regurgitating a manufacturer's press release without question.

However, had they bothered to look a little more closely and ask some questions, they would have discovered that this "study" involved the maker of fish-oil capsules simply handing them out to people and then asking them later how they felt!

No independent measuring of the test subjects before, during and after the period they were taking the capsules, a total reliance on self-reporting (known to be highly unreliable) and no control group against which to compare outcomes.

In short, completely pseudo-scientific rubbish.

Bare that in mind the next time you hear the promoter of one of these quack remedies say that their product's health benefits have been proven by studies.